山門寺景 The Monastery Gate
卻說他師徒兩個策馬前來，直至山門首觀看，果然是一座寺院。但見那：却说他师徒两个策马前来，直至山门首观看，果然是一座寺院。但见那：
詩曰：诗曰：
逐句解 Line by line
Now, master and disciple came riding on together until they drew rein at the head of the mountain gate and looked: it was indeed a monastery. Behold:
The storyteller's resumptive tag 卻說 ("now, to return to") picks the thread up from the close of the last chapter. 山門 ("mountain gate") is the formal outer gate of any Buddhist house, so called whether or not a mountain stands within a hundred lǐ of it. 但見那 cues the descriptive 賦 that follows.
Hall upon hall, tier upon tier; galleries and chambers ranged in rows.
The 賦 opens on reduplicated binomes: 層層 ("storey upon storey") against 疊疊 ("piled and piled"). 殿閣 are the halls and pavilions, 廊房 the cloister-rooms that ring a temple court.
Beyond the triple mountain gate, ten thousand shafts of coloured cloud lie towering and thick;
三山門 is the triple gateway of a monastery — the three portals figuring the three gates of liberation (三解脫門). 巍巍 (wēiwēi) is loftiness; 萬道 counts the cloud-beams with the measure-word 道, a "streak" of light.
before the Hall of the Five Blessings, a thousand strands of crimson mist coil and glow.
The 五福 are the Five Blessings enumerated in the 《尚書·洪範》: long life, wealth, health, love of virtue, and a natural death. 豔豔 (yànyàn) glows; 遶 (rào) is the older graph for 繞, "to wind about." 萬道 and 千條 answer each other exactly.
Two lanes of pine and bamboo, one grove of juniper and cypress.
篁 (huáng) is tall bamboo; 檜 (guì, not huì) the juniper-cypress. An avenue is set against a grove — and the next two lines will take up each in turn, a favourite doubling device of the form.
Two lanes of pine and bamboo: without a year, without a reckoning, pure and secluded of themselves;
無年無紀 — "no years, no reckonings": the trees stand outside the calendar. 清幽 names the cool seclusion prized in monastic verse.
one grove of juniper and cypress: full of hue, full of colour, proud and lovely as they please.
有色有顏 answers 無年無紀 affirmation for negation, graph for graph. 傲麗 ("proud beauty") is a striking compound: the evergreens are handsome precisely because they disdain the seasons.
See too the bell tower and the drum tower rising high, the stūpa-pagoda standing sheer.
鐘鼓樓 — the paired bell and drum towers that flank a monastery court; the bell will matter shortly. 浮屠 (fútú) transliterates buddha and, by extension, stūpa; 峻 (jùn) is sheerness.
Monks settled in meditation compose their nature; birds crying in the trees make an idle music.
安禪 is to sit in dhyāna; 定性 to still the nature, 定 being the term of art for samādhi. Against that inward fixity the birds are 閑 (xián) — at leisure. Stillness within, ease without.
Still and free of dust — truly still; pure and void, possessed of the Way — pure and void indeed.
The couplet closes by repeating its own epithets and certifying them: 真 ("truly") and 果 ("indeed"). 塵 is the world's dust; 清虛 the Daoist "pure vacancy." The 賦 ends by braiding the two vocabularies, as this novel does at every turn.
A poem says:
詩曰 is the storyteller's tag for a capping verse. Unusually, it falls here between two set-pieces — the 賦 just given and the quatrain to come — so that the monastery is described twice over before a word of action is spoken.
A lofty monastery, a Jetavana hidden in a kingfisher hollow; a temple's rare prospect, outdoing the Sahā world.
剎 is read chà (from Skt. kṣetra, a Buddha-field), so 上剎 is an "eminent monastery" — never shā. 祇園 (qíyuán) is the Jetavana Grove where the Buddha preached; the graph 祇 (U+7947) reads qí here, and should not be confused with the 神祗 of the last chapter. 招提 (zhāotí) is another loan-word for a monastery; 娑婆 (suōpó) is Sahā, the world of endurance in which we live.
Truly, the Pure Land is a scarce thing among men — yet of the empire's famous mountains, the monks hold most.
淨土 is the Pure Land. The second line, 天下名山僧占多, was already proverbial in the Ming: of all the realm's famous peaks, the clergy have taken the greater part (占, zhàn, "to occupy"). Praise and dry mockery in one breath — and a hint that these monks are worldlier than their spotless robes suggest.
Chapter fifteen ended with the will-horse haltered and the road opening westward; chapter sixteen begins, as so many do, with a building. Wú Chéng'ēn gives the Guanyin Chan Monastery not one description but two — a long parallel-prose 賦 and then a capping quatrain — and both are wholly, conventionally beautiful. Halls in tiers, coloured cloud, crimson mist, ageless pines, monks sunk in samādhi, birds at ease. Nothing is out of place. That is the point: the reader is shown a perfect exterior at the very threshold of a chapter whose title promises that the monks of this house will plot for a treasure.
The quatrain's last line does the quiet work. 天下名山僧占多 — "of the empire's famous mountains, monks hold most" — is a piece of received wit, admiring on its face and faintly barbed underneath. Monks occupy. The verb 占 belongs to possession, not to renunciation, and it is possession that will burn this monastery to its foundations before the chapter is out. Note also how the two vocabularies of the passage refuse to separate: 安禪 and 般若 stand beside 清虛 and the Five Blessings of the Book of Documents. The syncretism is not carelessness but the novel's native air.